Part 2: Diffusion of Innovations

Editor’s Note: Frances Shure, M.A., L.P.C., has performed an in-depth analysis addressing a key issue of our time: “Why Do Good People Become Silent – or Worse – About 9/11?” The resulting essay, being presented here as a series, is a synthesis of reports from academic research as well as clinical observations.

In answering the question in the title of this essay, last month’s segment addressed the observation that resistance to information that substantially challenges our worldview is the rule rather than the exception; the various forms of fear that underlie this resistance, our American “sacred myth”; and the observation that many of us unconsciously relate to our governmental leaders as parental figures on whom we project our (often unmet) needs for a protective parent.

Here, in Part 2, Shure expands her analysis with an anthropological study on how new ideas become accepted in societies and a look at the possibilities for acceptance of the truth about what really happened on 9/11.

Anthropologists and rural sociologists have observed that consistently within diverse cultures there can be found groups that vary in their openness to new ideas and technology—groups that fall within a neat bell curve. In each culture, a few adventurous members (only 2.5%) readily adopt innovations. These venturesome folks are called “innovators.”

Illustration 1The opinion leaders (13.5%) come next. Called the “early adopters,” they are influential and respected members of the society. They listen to the innovators, and then, upon reflection, may change their mind-set and adopt the innovation.

The “early majority” (34%) switch after listening to the influential early adopters, and the “late majority” (also 34%) adopt the new way only because it is practical to do so. The “laggards” (the last 16%) may never change their minds.

These percentages hold for situations as disparate as the sale of a new technology from Silicon Valley to a new, paradigm-shifting idea for improving the safety of drinking water in a traditional village in Peru. It makes no difference.1

This description of how change occurs in societies is called “Diffusion of Innovations” and has been adopted by Western businesses to determine the best strategy for marketing new technological products.2

The successful spread of an innovative technology or new idea reliably hinges on one point: whether or not opinion leaders—the early adopters—vouch for it.3 Professionals familiar with the practical application of this theory may be able to offer advice to the 9/11 Truth Movement.

Questions to be raised may include:

How do we soften the internal psychological barrier to the very disturbing evidence about 9/11, especially when this idea challenges a cultural “sacred myth”?4

How do we bring such a disturbing idea into acceptance, especially when there are major external barriers such as the corporate-owned media possibly still being infiltrated by a program similar to the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird—another paradigm-shifting, sacred-myth-destroying idea for many Americans?5

Let’s face it. If, from the beginning, the media had reported on the evidence that contradicted the official account of 9/11, or at least was suspicious, and had followed up with honest investigative journalism throughout the succeeding years, the sacred myth of 9/11 would not have congealed. In addition to not having performed their journalistic duties, some in the media might very well be considered criminally culpable for aiding and abetting the cover-up of the crimes of 9/11—mass murder and treason, primarily—and as accessories after the fact.6

Clearly related to our human proclivity to trust the influential “early adopters” is our proclivity to trust authority. Researcher Stanley Milgram’s startling studies of the early 1960s found that we humans tend to readily obey orders from a respected authority, even when doing so violates our deepest moral beliefs.

Editor’s note: To be continued in our next newsletter with Part 3: “Obeying and Believing Authority.”

5 Alex Constantine, Virtual Government: CIA Mind Control Operations in America (Feral House, 1997), 35–66.Carl Bernstein, “The CIA and the Media: How America’s Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency and Why the Church Committee Covered It Up,” http://carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php.William Casey, CIA Director, 1981–1987, candidly said, “We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.”

6 Kristina Borjesson, ed., Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press (Prometheus Books, 2004). In this anthology, see Dan Rather, “The Patriot and the Censor’s Necklace: An Interview with BBC Culture Correspondent Madeleine Holt,” on the pressures to avoid asking tough questions; and see Charlotte Dennett, “The War on Terror and the Great Game for Oil: How the Media Missed the Context.” The entire anthology documents the control, suppression, manipulation, and distortion of information of our news, which many believe have reached a crisis level.See also Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff, Truth Emergency and Media Reform, http://www.dailycensored.com/truth-emergency-and-media-reform/.